CASH FOR PROPERTIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25560, 13 June 1944, Page 3

CASH FOR PROPERTIES

Sir, —The chickens have come home to roost. Mr James Begg complains about the same form of inquisition as the National st Party imposed on the dole workers and also on the war veterans who applied for the war veterans’ allowance to which .they were entitled if permanently incapable of performing work. What poetic justice to ask the big as well as small income tax payers the very same questions about all their sources of income and property and force them likewise to produce the same facts of property owned by the taxpayer, his wife, and family, as well as bank books, receipts. etc., in order to audit everything and find out the net incomes as tne Nationalists once compelled them to do. The purpose of finding out all sources of income of the taxpayer is obvious, as unearned income pays higher income tax than earned income pays. I wonder whether the income tax payer will have to answer such questions as ”Do you live with your wife,” with which the war veteran and the dole worker had to put up. Let us hope the Labour Party m following' the National Party’s precedent does not ; put that humiliation on him. When the sold er gives his life it seem 3 just that the civilian should.give a just return of his income to enable payment on an audit basis to be made out if our fighting men are to be properly equipped and if the promise be kept that “ there shall be no forgotten men this war.” One hopes the inspectors will approach parents who have lost their sons or widows who have lost their husbands, when auditing income tax returns, with more delicacy than applicants for war veterans’ allowance received from these visitors to these sick or stricken war men who dreaded relapses from the ordeal they went through. —I am, etc.. J. E. MacManus.